Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening courthouse doors nationwide for gun rights advocates to argue that restrictions on firearms are unconstitutional.

In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the right to have a handgun for self-defense is "fundamental from an American perspective [and] applies equally to the federal government and the states."

Embrace your nausea. There's more here than meets the eye.

Essentially, what the Court ruled is that Constitutional rights trump states' rights or een individual rights. "Libertarians" may mark this as a good thing, but I do not. See, the Second Amendment prescribes that, in order to ensure your God-given inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you have to buy a gun.

I'm betting that's not what the Founders intended. This might be the only enumerated right that requires a citizen to do something in order to enforce it. A truly libertarian position would be that an individual's right to privacy is far more important than the constitutionality of a manufactured good.

This is a glaring distinction that so-called "glibertarians" (e.g. people who read and masturbated to Ayn Rand books) fail to grasp and it's really a simple concept: no man is free if for that freedom he is requred to carry a weapon.

But hold that thought for another time. Here's the really scary part.

This decision opens the door for the Court to decide that individual state laws are unconstitutional. Should Roe V. Wade for example be overturned, there is no check on the Court to decide that New York's abortion law violates the Constitution. Or New Jersey's. Or California. Should a consitutional challenge to the gay marriage ban fail in SCOTUS, that would open the door to overturning Hawaiian law, Iowan law, and would also prevent any number of states from recognizing homosexual marriages.

It wouldn't stop there. Your state doesn't have a death penalty? Too bad. You might be forced to get in line with the totalitarians. Our laws would revert to the lowest common denominator of a moron state like Alabama or Mississippi.

Medical marijuana? Nope. Speed limit of 55? Gone, mostly because the federal government mandates it in exchange for highway funds, so all it will take is some yahoo from Montana to overturn that necessary and safer speed limit, and your state won't be able to do a thing about it. Property rights? Eminent domain will encroach and absorb as many properties as it deems necessary, because the SCOTUS has already ruled it's perfectly constitutional to appropriate your land and turn it over to a developer.

Are we sure we want to walk this path when it's taken so long and we've worked so hard to bring even a shred of progressivism to the nation?

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing